In Two Minds

by Alis Hawkins

  Given his age and my resolute lack of interest in my inheritance, nobody could have expected my father to do more than preside over the estate’s gradual decline; but he had behaved as if he had a son ready and eager to take up the reins, an heir with an eye to the prosperity of future generations. Had he assumed – orhoped – that I would prove to be such a man when the time came?

  I recalled the letters that had arrived during my years of self-imposed exile; letters detailing rents my father had remitted, rebuilding he had undertaken, reductions in payment that he had sanctioned. Lazily, I had dismissed it all as the news of a man who had nothing more interesting to write about. Now, I saw that he had been providing me, year after year, with an education in how to be a good squire.

  The guilt and anguish of that realisation made me resolve to be a better man. But it also raised an urgent question in my mind. Where was I going to find the money to stand as coroner?

  John

  The light was going as I rode down over the little Gwenffrwd stream and on towards Treforgan. It wasn’t late but the day was cloudy and keen to be over. I turned Seren up the drive to the Glanteifi mansion and pulled my collar up against the fat drips coming down off trees that made the drive into an avenue. Down the slope, away from the house, the Teifi was running fast and brown and the swans who lived on this stretch had pulled themselves up onto the little island directly below the house. There they were, the pair of them, necks swung round to bury their heads between their wings. They’d decided night was coming on, too.

  I left the mare with one of the grooms and went around to the front door. Still felt odd, not going in the servants’ entrance, but the housekeeper’d been very clear about it, the first time I’d come here on my own – I was here on official business so I’d better present myself at the front door and be announced, not sneak in at the back.

  The blonde maid, Clara, smiled when she opened the door. Then she remembered her place and asked me to wait in the hall for ‘Mr Harry’.

  So. Old George was still alive then. Harry’d be Mr Probert-Lloyd the second his father died.

  I watched Clara hitch at her skirts to run up the stairs. She caught me looking and we both blushed. To distract myself from what was happening in my trousers I looked about the hallway. The black-and-white tiles were so clean you could’ve lain down and licked them. Clara, or one of Glanteifi’s other maids, must mop and polish them every single day for them to look like that. Same with the bannister rail – gleaming, it was.

  ‘John!’ Harry came down the stairs two at a time as if he could see every inch, though I noticed that his hand was on the rail all the way, just in case. Perhaps it was him that was making it shiny not beeswax and turpentine.

  We clasped hands like old friends, and he took me into the library. I hoped he was going to ring for something to eat. I’d had nothing since breakfast and my stomach was wrapped round my backbone.

  As it turned out, no ringing needed to be done. Whether it was me he’d been expecting or somebody else, I don’t know, but there was food laid out on trays already.

  Not that that was the most surprising thing that happened in the next five minutes. Not by a long way. I could hardly believe the news Harry’d got from Llewelyn Kerr.

  ‘Mrs Parry’sHughes’s heir? Why didn’t she tell us?’

  ‘She might not know. Besides, the will probably won’t stand. Jones could contest it, say that Jenkyn Hughes wasn’t of sound mind when he wrote it. Reckitt’d back him up, I’m sure.’

  ‘Be a hell of a blow to him if it did stand. To go to the bother of killing Hughes so he could inherit, only to find he wasn’t going to.’

  Harry picked up a pickled onion. ‘Of course, we don’t actually know that Jones is the murderer.’

  ‘True,’ I said. But Harry must’ve heard my reluctance to let Jones off.

  ‘Very well, let’s make the case against him.’ He fished into the pickle jar again. ‘You start.’

  ‘Well, he had a motive: the inheritance,’ I said. ‘Then, he was on the spot where Hughes was last seen. He got off the boat at Penbryn while Hughes was meeting this woman at Tresaith.’

  ‘And what he saw through his telescope? Do we think that’s relevant?’

  I felt myself blush. ‘I suppose he might’ve been just watching. You know, watching Hughes. With the woman he was meeting.’ Harry made a face. ‘But, more likely,’ I hurried on, ‘Jones saw a chance for himself. To kill Hughes after the woman’d gone and he was there by himself. Or, if he saw someone else kill him, to turn it to his advantage.’

  I watched Harry weigh that up. ‘Another thing did cross my mind,’ I said. ‘Blackmail. What if Shoni Jones saw the murder, then tried to blackmail whoever’d killed Hughes? He might’ve ended up dead himself.’

  Harry cocked his head. ‘You think perhaps he isn’t out there letting emigrants on the list know about the meeting?’

  ‘He obviously intended doing that. But what if he stopped off to have a quiet word with the killer – feather his nest – and got bashed over the head like Hughes?’

  I could see that the idea made sense to Harry. ‘Judging by what you’ve found out,’ he said, ‘Jones is a man who doesn’t mind chancing his arm. So it’s possible.’ Clumsily, he picked up a slice of beef with his knife and bit a chunk off it. Not very gentlemanly. I watched him think. ‘What about the body being put in the kiln?’ he asked. ‘If Jones is involved, either he watched the murderer hide the body in the waste and was content to leave it there, or he put it there himself. Why?’

  ‘Because he needed the body to stay hidden while he got his hands on Jenkyn Hughes’s papers. Mrs Coleman wouldn’t’ve just handed them over if news of Hughes’s murder’d been common knowledge. She’s too careful for that.’

  Harry nodded. ‘And Shoni Jones had Hughes’s signet ring to vouch for him. He’d taken that from the corpse, I suppose? Do we know whether Jones was on that last lime boat – the day before Teff Harris found the body?’ he asked. ‘Because, if he was, he could have got them to leave him on the beach, moved the body out of the kiln, and been well away before Teff came to check that the limestone was there.’

  Damn and blast it. I hadn’t asked the Whaler whether the same people’d been on the boat for both the last lime shipments. I’d been so sure that it was the previous load’s delivery that we needed to concentrate on, the one Jenkyn Hughes had been on the beach to meet. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.

  ‘Let’s assume he was. How easy would it have been for him to move the body once the lime had been offloaded?’

  We went to and fro with theories and decided that the one that fitted the facts best was that whoever’d dumped Hughes’s body on the limestone had done it as soon he could, after the lime boat had rounded the Aberporth headland on the way back to Cardigan. And he’d probably used the rowing boat propped up at the gable end of Gwyn Puw’s cottage. Teff’d said nothing about drag marks down to the sea on the wet sand so, most likely, the body’d been moved while the tide was still fairly high.

  We both ate. For a man who said he was only eating to keep me company, Harry was putting away a good amount of cold meat and pickles.

  ‘Mr Schofield asked to see me yesterday,’ he said.

  A hot rush of alarm went through me. ‘I expect he was cross I wasn’t back yet, was he?’

  ‘Yes, he was. Blamed me rather than you, though. Which I encouraged, obviously.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. I made him even less happy, I’m afraid.’

  I turned to look at him. ‘How? What did you say?’

  Harry’s eyes were still on his plate, and not in a way that meant he was trying to see me. ‘I asked him whether he’d welcome you as an articled clerk. With me buying you into the articles, obviously.’

  I couldn’t help smiling. Harry hadn’t let me down after all. But the smile died as the truth dawned. ‘He said no, then?’

  ‘I’m sorry, John. Apparently, he’s got
a nephew who’s going to take over when he retires.’

  Damn. Because both of Old Schofield’s daughters had married men with family businesses to inherit, I’d assumed that there’d be a vacancy at the solicitor’s office when the old man retired. Wrong.

  I felt my throat close up, and swallowed hard to clear whatever stupidity was lodged there. ‘I’ve been thinking, actually. I might emigrate. Or go for a policeman.’

  He looked as if I’d suddenly spoken French. ‘Emigrate? To America?’

  Didn’t he think I had the nerve? ‘Yes, why not? Or I could just go as far as London and join the detectives in the Metropolitan police.’

  ‘If it’s detecting you want, stay here and work with me!’

  ‘Two problems with that.’ In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘One, you’re not elected yet. Two, that would mean staying on at Schofield’s and he probably wouldn’t let me keep helping you. And, anyway, I’ve had enough of clerking. I told you, I want something better.’

  ‘There is an alternative,’ Harry said, slowly, as if he was convincing himself that what he was about to say was a good idea.

  I waited.

  ‘You’re good with figures, aren’t you?’

  Where’d he got that from? I didn’t ever recall telling him that. Not that it wasn’t true, mind.

  ‘Yes. Calculating’s always come easily to me.’

  ‘Ormiston – my father’s steward – will be looking to retire shortly. In fact, I’m slightly concerned that, if my father dies now, he’ll give notice immediately.’ He stopped and I could tell he was trying to see my reaction. I didn’t reply for fear I was getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘You must have picked up a lot of land law?’ he asked.

  ‘Quite a bit. That’s a big slice of Mr Schofield’s business.’

  ‘If you were to become Ormiston’s assistant or apprentice, you’d already know quite a lot of the job. And, if you can make sense of figures, you’re most of the way there. It’d just be a case of getting to know the estate and how it runs.’

  So, I had the shit-free end of the stick after all. I stared at him. Was he offering me this because he was guilty about making Mr Schofield angry? Because he felt he’d let me down over the business of him setting up as a solicitor?

  ‘You’re offering me a job as your steward’s assistant? To be steward of Glanteifi when he retires?’

  ‘Yes. What do you think?’

  Harry’d offered the same job to somebody else once. His boyhood friend, David Thomas. Was this how he bound people to him – people who were important to him – by offering this job that would make you almost-but-not-quite a gentleman?

  ‘The last person you offered the job to didn’t turn out so well.’

  He snorted a mirthless little laugh. ‘True. I’d like to think I could expect better from you.’

  ‘I guarantee it. But that’s not setting the bar very high, is it?’

  ‘Then you agree?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to have to think about it, Harry. I’d talked myself halfway across the Atlantic on the way here from St Dogmaels.’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded. Trying to pretend he wasn’t disappointed that I hadn’t said yes, straight off. ‘Just so you know,’ he said, as if it’d just come into his head, ‘the estate would provide you with somewhere to live so you wouldn’t have to go on living in your digs in town.’

  ‘Right.’

  He smiled. ‘And, of course, if I do become coroner, the estate would have to take a back seat whenever we had an inquest to run.’

  We. I couldn’t help it, my spirits lifted at that. ‘How would Mr Ormiston feel about that?’

  ‘At the moment, he has no assistant at all. Even one that abandoned him from time to time would be an improvement.’

  Harry opened the door, then, and called for Wil-Sam, the hall boy, to come and take our plates away. ‘Ask for some tea for us, will you?’ he said to the boy. ‘And cake if there is any.’

  ‘There is.’ Wil-Sam looked up from balancing plates and cutlery. ‘Mrs Griffiths said we’d need cake for all the visitors.’

  Harry closed the door behind the boy and turned to me. I saw his hand go into a pocket and he took out what looked like a letter. Not much use to him, I thought. Unless it was one he’d written.

  ‘This came this morning.’ He stood it up in his lap with both hands. ‘Usually, Mrs Griffiths reads my correspondence to me, but she was busy with my father when this came.’ He chewed his lip. ‘Would you read it for me?’

  He was uncomfortable. I wondered what this letter was.

  ‘If you like.’ I must’ve sounded doubtful because he carried on chewing his lip.

  ‘I’d generally wait. But–’ He cut himself short. Sighed. ‘It’s from Miss Howell in Ipswich. We’ve been corresponding for some weeks now, and I’m afraid Mrs Griffiths is a bit shocked by some of Miss Howell’s views. On the place of women. Particularly in church.’

  Oh ho! So he and Lydia Howell were writing to each other. What was that all about? There’d been sparks between them when we met her in Ipswich, but I’d assumed that was because Harry resented the way she’d deceived him when she lived here.

  As if he’d made his mind up, he held the letter out to me. I took it and opened it up. Lydia Howell wrote in a strong, legible hand. Scanning down quickly I didn’t see a single crossing out. Either she had a clear mind or she’d made a clean copy to send.

  ‘Dear Harry,’ I read.

  Dear Harry? I could see why Mrs Griffiths’d taken exception. Lydia Howell was an unmarried governess – she didn’t have much business writing to him in the first place, never mind calling him by his Christian name.

  ‘I’m writing this in more haste than usual as I’ve been thinking about your case.’

  It was odd to be reading Welsh. I barely saw my own language written. Only in hymn books and the occasional public notice.

  ‘I must confess, I envy you your investigation. It sounds unfeeling, I know, and I hope you know that I would never wish anybody dead. But, given that the death has taken place, I envy you your part in seeing justice done.

  I begin to feel, more and more, the confines of life here. The combined effects of your visit to this house and our subsequent correspondence have stirred up a dissatisfaction in me with my current circumstances. I find I long, increasingly, to be amongst my own people, to speak to those who share memories with me, to laugh easily in my own language at peculiarities that the English do not understand, to sing our Welsh hymns.

  I feel like a boat adrift, torn from the anchorage of language and land; or like a plant, withering after being torn up by its roots and cast over the hedge. I have no stability, no nourishment here.

  Hiraeth – that is what is plaguing me, I know it. But how could I come back? What would I come back to? And what as?’

  What indeed?

  Lydia Howell was an orphan, like me. And, like me, she was dependent on employment for her living. When the Reverend Mudge’s children outgrew the need for a governess, she would be without a home. Her hiraeth – that longing we Welsh feel for home, for our past to be present to us again – must be tinged with fear for the future.

  ‘I find myself dwelling on thoughts of the settlement in Ohio that your poor dead American proposed. If many people from Cardiganshire are going there to make their home, perhaps I should do likewise? I would then be amongst my own people and I might find those who remembered Nathaniel… It would be good to be able to speak of those days without fear of the consequences.’

  Her words were guarded, as well they might be. Mrs Griffiths would know little, if anything, of Lydia and Nathaniel Howell.

  ‘I must hurry to catch the post,’ Lydia wrote, breaking off almost in the middle of a sentence as if somebody had come to stand over her, hand out for the letter. ‘I remain, yours affectionately, Lydia Howell.’

  Yours? Affectionately?

  Harry could school his expression when he
wanted to but he couldn’t keep from blushing. His reaction to her parting words told me more than he would want me to know, so I said nothing.

  ‘She’s an intelligent woman,’ he said, his tone a lot blander than his complexion.

  ‘I can see that. So what’s she been saying that’s made Mrs Griffiths so uncomfortable?’

  ‘She’s been engaging in spirited, intellectual conversation with a married man in the presence of his wife. Mrs Griffiths regards this as the moral equivalent of dancing naked in front of him.’

  We laughed but I reckoned Mrs Griffiths was wiser than Harry on this subject.

  Lydia Howell would do well to think about changing her circumstances.

  Harry

  Despite the fact that it would be dark before he got there, John insisted on returning to Cardigan and the Black Lion rather than staying at Glanteifi. He was adamant that he simply wanted to be there in loco coronator, as it were, but I could not help being convinced that he wanted to escape, that I had, somehow, misjudged things in suggesting that he become the estate’s under-steward.

  Fortunately, Reckitt’s arrival forced me to put such thoughts aside and, after he had spoken to my father and pronounced himself pleased with the patient’s progress, I prevailed upon him to eat dinner with me and accept a bed for the night.